Apprenticeships are in full swing. Almost every Middle School Eagle has secured an apprenticeship or is well on the way to doing so.

What are our Eagles doing?

Helping save pets at an animal hospital; making sushi at a restaurant; decorating cakes at a bakery. Going door to door for a political campaign and analyzing the results. Working for a small business owner and for a clothing store that provides an outlet for the poorest villages in Africa. Apprenticing for one of the top fashion designers in the world in Los Angeles. And many more adventures.

What have the Eagles learned from their apprenticeship searches? Being brave enough to hit “send” on an email asking to be given a chance to prove yourself. Negotiating for a role and fair pay. Showing up the first day and not knowing anyone. Scrubbing bathroom floors when necessary, and caring enough to do it right. Realizing that working from 8 AM until 5 PM makes for a very long day, unless you are doing something you love.

All of these lessons are becoming part of the DNA of our Eagles, who long before college will know the importance of work hard as part of delivering far value, in return for lessons that will move them along on a Hero’s Journey.

What will be the first question we’ll be asked when Acton Academy resumes in September? This one: “When can we start working on our apprenticeships again?”

Launching a new business; landing that special client or securing an apprenticeship – each of these is reason enough to celebrate with a friend.

So on Friday the thirteen Acton Eagles who have secured an apprenticeship or started the negotiations for one took each other out for lunch to celebrate.

It was a humble celebration. One Eagle, on seeing the outdoor taco restaurant El Chilito remarked: “It’s exactly like a food trailer; just no wheels.” Spartan though it may be, the food at El Chilito was delicious and it was a beautiful day to hike to lunch.

More importantly, we toasted the bravery of thirteen young heroes, each of whom had written an irresistible email , launched it into cyberspace and received an affirmative response. Knowing how to discover, pitch and land your next adventure is a 21st century skill worth celebrating.

We started this session’s Apprenticeship Search with the same plan as last year. Introduce one Apprenticeship Challenge at a time, each with a note to read and a skill to practice to help Eagles find, pitch and land a world changing apprenticeship.

Almost immediately the plan began to unravel. Veteran Eagles who had mastered the Apprenticeship Challenge last year, and who all year long had been cataloging apprenticeships that fit their gifts, flow experiences and opportunities, wanted to skip ahead and pitch for apprenticeships immediately. Some were quite talented and offered well targeted and compelling pitches.

Unfortunately, this led to less experienced Eagles believing they too could launch an Apprenticeship pitch, without doing all the upfront work. The Acton brand would be at risk if Eagles began pelting potential employers with poorly worded emails.

This led to a morning launch on the importance of process:

Would you build a bridge, “on the fly,” just winging it? would you be willing to be the first person to drive across the bridge that had no blueprint?

Why do you need processes? Is it to prove to others that you know what you are doing? To have a record that you followed careful procedures, in case something goes terribly wrong? As a beginner, to learn the steps? As a master, to lay steppingstones to inspire and equip the next generation?

The Eagles weren’t buying it. Many thought the Apprenticeship processes were stilted and unnatural. Plus, a set of procedures for bridges made sense, because it was a matter of life and death; apprenticeships weren’t as important. Even an attempt to paint apprenticeships as a bridge to anew life fell flat.

For some Eagles, moving forward without practice was almost certain to fail; but requiring Eagles to use a process just didn’t seem like the Acton way. Yet there was great risk in a laissez faire approach that could damage the community’s reputation.

Finally, a reasonable compromise emerged:

1. Eagles could either opt completely in or completely out of the Apprenticeship Process.

2. Any Eagle opting out would not be able to mention the Acton name in an email, phone call or in person pitch.

3. If an Eagle elected to opt out of the Apprenticeship Process, he or she would need a parent’s approval.

Choice and consequences; freedom and responsibility. Processes only when you think you need them. The right to fail. They’ll be some hard lessons from this, but the world hopefully will have fewer failed bridges in the long run.

Those of us who hire employees know searching for the right person too often requires a depressing swim through a sea of commodity-like resumes and many cover pages strewn with grammatical mistakes and misspelled words.

So imagine you open an email, glancing down the text to see a picture of a whimsically dressed eleven year old, holding an equally whimsically dressed puppy. Then you start to read:

Dear Ms. Cxxxxxxxx,

I visited xxxxx last year with my mom, and it was one of the most beautiful, fascinating, imaginative, and inspiring experiences of my life. I learned so much about the methods and processes used to create beautiful clothes and how travel can work to inspire new creations. I admire you (and those you work with) so deeply for what you contribute to this world. I am so grateful for that experience, and I will cherish it forever. Thank you for spending time with us and giving us a tour of this beautiful space.

At my school here in Austin, Texas (Acton Academy), we believe in learning by knowing, learning by doing and learning by being. Each student is committed to their individual journey to find their passion. Otherwise known as, The Hero’s Journey. We each are blessed with our own gifts, talents, and callings. We nourish them every single day, so we are prepared to change the world some day.

The main gift that I focus on is fashion. I hope to bring beauty to the world, and inspire everyone to be themselves, and have their own style. As an 11 year old middle schooler, I am beginning a fashion blog very soon, and styling a fashion photo shoot with a local fashion photographer and a few friends, which I will then pitch to a magazine. I also designed and created a fashion look book last fall. I styled it completely by myself, and shot the photos on my own, as well. I sold them $15 each at a children’s business fair, and nearly sold out. I will mail one to you if you are interested.

Fashion is a huge part of my life, and I believe it is one of the things that makes us unique and authentic. I would love everyone to believe in that statement someday, and I am wondering if you would help me by considering my request for an apprenticeship.

We are nearing the end of our school year. Our next step on our journey is to find an apprenticeship with someone who is considered a hero to you. The apprenticeships will be one or two weeks, and each of us will work with our hero, doing what they do to see if we enjoy it, and want to further pursue it. I immediately thought how amazing it would be to work with you. Inside one of the most beautiful fashion studios in the world. I will be very helpful, and never in the way.

Please be in touch with me if you would allow me to do this, or if you would like to talk more about it with me or my mom. Thank you so much for considering this request.

Very sincerely,

Reese Youngblood

(Reprinted with permission from Reese and her parents.)

How would you reply? Would you hire Reese as an apprentice, if fashion were your calling?

Here’s the reply Reese received:

Hello, dear Reese,

Your letter has touched my heart. I love the sweet clarity of your vision. Its timing is impeccable and poignant as I spent the weekend writing about my heart’s desires and my own heroic journey. I will need to speak with Christina who is not here right now. But if it were only up to me, I would say yes in a heartbeat! I have an idea that I will propose to my partner and we can see what happens. It would give me great pleasure to have someone as bright, passionate, focused, capable and talented as you are as my apprentice because it is my experience that not only you would have something to learn from me, but I from you, too!

I will keep you posted. In the meantime, can you tell me more about the practical aspects and time constraints of your apprenticeship. What is the possible time period – from now until end of June? Or? And more practical considerations such as housing and food – is your mom going to come with you?

Thank you!

Cxxxxxxxxx

When we critiqued Reese’s email in the studio and reviewed the reply she received, one Eagle chirped: “That sounds like a ‘yes’ to me.” We all agreed.

Graduates from prestigious colleges increasingly find themselves unable to find a job, and must move back in with their parents. Perhaps these graduates should be looking for a calling instead.

Not to mention that a few lessons from an eleven year old about how to write an irresistible email might help too.

For the next six weeks, we’ll be exploring the theme: “Which questions motivate a hero?”

Our adventure will have three main thrusts:

1. Which questions will motivate YOU on your Hero’s Journey?

Here we’ll dig deeply into the three questions our Eagles will ask to measure if they are happy, satisfied and fulfilled: Am I contributing something meaningful? Am I a good person? and Who do I love, and who loves me?

Eagles will work hard to identify their gifts; explore “flow” and investigate the irresistible opportunities that will motivate them to brainstorm, select and acquire a world changing apprenticeship.

As part of this work, Eagles will learn to write compelling emails, make irresistible phone pitches and dazzle in face-to-face interviews on their way to finding apprenticeships for next session.

The final exhibit will be an electronic portfolio designed to secure an apprenticeship, which will include a two minute “Message to Garcia” video showing each Eagle promising to “get the job done” if given the chance.

2. Which questions will motivate a FELLOW HERO?

The focus here is becoming a world class conversationalist, so our Eagles will be able to walk into any gathering and strike up a conversation that will make the other person feel important.

Eagles will practice their new found techniques on Running Partners, incoming 2014-15 Eagles to Acton and students from other schools, until the art of conversation becomes second nature.

The final product here will be a short “Hero Story” about a new friend, that captures what makes that person a “genius on a hero’s journey.”

3. Which questions will motivate a TRIBE OR NATION?

Oprah, Johnny Carson or William F. Buckley – who is the greatest interviewer of all time? Our Eagles will compare and contrast world class interviewers, as they learn the art of asking penetrating questions on stage, on the radio or on television.

Near the end of the session, we’ll invite adult heroes to class (especially those who might sponsor an apprenticeship) and allow our Eagles to conduct interviews in front of a live audience. The final product will be an edited transcript of the interview.

Executing an apprenticeship that may lead to a calling in life; learning to make excellent conversation, anytime, anywhere, with anyone; asking penetrating questions from a stage – all 21st Century Skills for our young heroes who plan to change the world.

That’s a question we’ve been pondering over Winter Break, in preparation for a Parent’s Meeting on Friday to discuss our plans for high school.

Is a prestigious college degree the answer? Our Eagles will be armed to excel at the best colleges, and their portfolios may lift them above the teeming mass of commodity applicants, who clingto sterile GPA’s, test scores and class ranks.

But in world where too many college graduates are asking: “Would you like fries with that?,” a $300,000 diploma looks increasingly like a prestigious Ponzi scheme.

Google’s chief hiring officer, Laszlo Bock, quoted in Thomas Friedman’s Sunday New York Times column, seems to agree: “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.”

For Bock, too many colleges “don’t deliver on what they promise. You generate a ton of debt, you don’t learn the most useful things for your life. It’s [just] an extended adolescence.” So the “proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time.”

A prestigious college degree? Maybe it’s still a good bet, if you can afford it. But our Eagles need a 21st century back up plan, perhaps working at a company like Google.

So what does Google care about? Three key attributes, beyond technical skill:

General cognitive ability. The ability to make decisions in real time, with disparate and often conflicting information. This trait has no correlation to traditional test score IQ. Think of Socratic Discussions and Quests.

Emergent leadership skills: Emergent leaders are a far cry from being President of the Chess Club. Emergent leaders assess opportunities, assign roles and lead when necessary, but who are just as willing to listen, ask questions and relinquish power to others. Think of Eagles running their own learning communities.

Humility and ownership. The humility to learn from failure; the humility to ask questions instead of trying to be “the smartest person in the room;” the courage to own your mistakes, to get up and dust yourself off, and try again and again. A perfect description of the Hero’s Journey.

The least important trait for Google is “expertise.” Too many experts cling to a false sense of certainty, rather than a willingness to take on the difficult, unstructured problems that lead to breakthroughs and sustained growth.

So are our Eagles impressed that they are qualified to work at Google? Not hardly. As one Eagle put it: “Work at Google? I’m planning on launching the company that destroys Google.”

Sergey and Larry, look out. Not so long ago, Bill Gates might have wanted to interview you for a job.

How does it feel to choose your own educational challenges, including to accept the challenge of a real world apprenticeship?

Here’s a quote from this week’s Journal Contest, from an Eagle who last year attended an excellent suburban school:

“Public school and Acton are complete opposites. Now I don’t have to wait for my friends in Math. Now when they are falling behind, I can keep going. Here at Acton, I can run freely because I’m not in a cage like Tweety Bird anymore. Now I feel like a Road Runner, running as fast as I want and stopping at any point.”

Here’s the same Eagle discussing “lessons learned” at his real world apprenticeship:

“The most important lesson I learned from my apprenticeship was to be patient and loyal, because when my golf teacher said: ‘I need you to do an inventory of our clubs,” I was about to say ‘I quit, because this is the most boring thing ever.’ But I told myself I needed to stay loyal and do it.

So I did it and the next time I had my apprenticeship I got to do a lesson on the course with my teacher and teach someone.

This will help me on my Hero’s Journey because now I know there’s always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

Today was our first day back from a two week Spring Break, at least for a few Eagles.

As you’ll see from the photo above, we had quite a few “no shows” this morning. Sleeping in? Spring Fever? A flu epidemic?

Not hardly.

You see, many of our Eagles are working at their apprenticeships. For some, what was meant to be a four day experiment has turned into a two week (or longer) assignment.

One Eagle emailed last night about her apprenticeship:

“I’m glad to say that things have been great! I’m learning about all of the positions and roles in the communication department, sitting in on meetings and learning SO much. Everybody here is so kind and it’s inspiring how they’re doing something meaningful.

In fact, tomorrow I will be working so I won’t be able to come to school. Hopefully, for the rest of the week I’ll be able to come for at least part of the school day.”

Later I heard from her mother that this Eagle hated to miss the first day back, but “had a 2 PM meeting that was too important to miss.”

Eleven years old, and already too busy changing the world to rush back to school.

Don’t worry. She’s several years ahead of grade level, so this industrious Eagle — working on the side — is still likely to finish her high school academic requirements while she is still in middle school.

We launched this morning by listening to Ronald Reagan’s Challenger speech and comparing it to Franklin Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address.

The goal is to have Eagles luxuriate in great speeches – soaking in the most powerful words, phrases and symbols as they listen and observe more intentionally.

Next session each Eagle each will choose a historical figure and write and deliver a speech as that character, at an important time and place.

This morning Eagles rehearsed and polished their final Apprenticeship pitches – determined to secure each a real world apprenticeship by April.

How do you grab someone’s attention early in an email, call or in person meeting, long enough to ask an important question?

How do you explain a complex idea like an apprenticeship, in just a few words?

How do you ask for the job; clearly, directly in a way that’s difficult to refuse?

Bravely, our Eagles explored these questions and prepared for the “Big Ask” next week.

Then, in the afternoon, ink blot tests and more Jungian dream analysis, the beginning of understanding the power of that FDR and Reagan’s symbols – and especially the Hero’s Journey — are deep inside each one of us.

At day’s end, Eagles reflected back to lessons learned from the morning’s weekly wrap-up, discussing the amount of effort they’d put into their work vs. the amount of payoff they received in terms of personal achievement and our classroom points-tracking system. In Core Skills they determined individually which work to focus on to best reach the goals they’d set for themselves on Monday.

While all journaled in hopes of winning the weekly writing contest (congratulations, Kenzie!), some focused on Khan skills, others on their Mystery Fiction writing, others on their Apprenticeship Quest work including some beautifully rendered Mind Maps.

Looking for tools to increase focus and help in their pursuit excellence, some students experimented with making their own “Claire Boxes”, named for the Eagle who first had the idea of creating a sensory-deprivation space to block out distraction and help her dive deeply into her independent work.Later in the History Yurt, all Eagles were able to enjoy special personal space with our new eye pillows; Eagles lay back with the lavendar-scented pillows weighing pleasantly against their eyelids and listened to stories from 17th Century England, including the military and political strategies of Oliver Cromwell during and after the English Civil War, and a look at daily London life through the diaries of Samuel Pepys. We learned that one of our Eagles’ ancestors was likely the actual executioner of King Charles! All students are working towards learning about their ancestry as part of their ongoing series of History Challenges.

Enjoy the three-day weekend and have a Happy MLK Day, see everyone on Tuesday!

1. Deep learning requires context. This means having a clear visual “journey map” and milestones ON THE WALL that our Eagles can track. (“You are here; Here’s where we have been; Here’s where we are going and WHY it matters”); plus a diagnostic Framework (“Below are some questions you can ask to decide what to do next.”)

2. Every launch must put students “in the shoes of a protagonist” facing a decision that will matter in their lives, and somehow will shape their identity and determine their destiny. Otherwise, who cares?

3. Our primary job is to set the rules and incentives so as to shape the learning environment. Then let the students learn through “learning to do.” Experiential learning is best; Socratic discussion next best. Experts/lectures are allowed, but Eagles can access this information on their own.

If we deliver:

1. End goals that add richness to our Eagle’s Hero’s Journeys;

2. Maps and milestones.

3. Frameworks; and

4. Enticing rules and incentives;

then great learning happens.

Here’s a photo of this morning’s launch. Below an example of a Mind Map for the upcoming Apprenticeships – Eagles learning to create their own visuals.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to equip students to create learning journeys, frameworks and incentive systems for themselves and others, so the “learning to learn” becomes a deeply imbedded habit, and one that spreads exponentially.

How do you encourage a learning community to strive for excellence? That was today’s challenge, with a roomful of energetic Eagles back from Christmas Break.

We opened the day debating whether our overarching goal this session should be Excellence or Mastery? Excellence won the day, based on the Eagle’s logic that the practice of Excellence must precede Mastery.

So Excellence became the “word of the session,” with signatures as a sign of commitment.

We continued with a review of the spring session, which will include a Crime Solving project and a reenactment of the Salem Witch Trial.

Silent Core Skills time began with Eagles setting long term Khan goals, including mastering the last of the basic math skill sets, before individual Eagles will be asked to choose whether to dive deeply into Algebra, Geometry or Trigonometry in a few weeks.

We followed with a Socratic Discussion about how you decide what book to read next. Should the decision be based on ”fun” or some other criteria? Fiction or non-fiction? Genre? A focus on the time period we’ll cover in History this spring (1600 to 1776); a scientific subject we’ll explore in projects like DNA or genetics or psychology? Improving a skill like writing or speech making? Or perhaps going deep into a biography of a hero.

Eagles get to choose what they read, but we want them to choose wisely.

Just before lunch we unveiled this spring’s plan for securing an apprenticeship in April, and how Mind Maps might encourage some new paths or people who can help.

Then after lunch, the launch of our newest project, using science to solve crimes, complete with a real crime scene.

How do you encourage a learning community to strive for excellence? Paint a vision of an exciting journey. Offer choices. Insist on clarity.

Reading, writing and arithmetic – critical, fundamental skills, and our Eagles continue to progress faster than most middle schoolers – and thanks to Khan Academy and Shelfari, we have proof of their efforts.

But there’s much more to life, and thus should be much more to learning than the basics.

Like playing sandlot football before school starts.

Or in our morning discussion, exploring the right way to hold a film crew huddle, so you don’t waste your time in meaningless meetings (something I wish I’d learned a long time ago.)

Or as a task preparing Eagles for finding the right spring apprenticeship, having our My Hero’s Guide Mr. Temp inspire them with his drumming gifts as he asks: Are you born with powerful gifts or do you have to develop them?

Or having Allan Staker give his Hero’s story about the entrepreneurial ups and downs of starting a video-game company, a twisting tale about the risks and rewards of believing in yourself.

Yes, there’s far, far more to learning in the 21st century than simply the basics.

Many people ask how we integrate the disparate parts of a day into a single narrative.

Here’s an example:

We launched our morning huddle with a video clip of Susan Boyle, the surprising singer who bravely overwhelmed skeptics with her powerful voice on the 2009 version of Britain’s. The point? That following your dream requires perseverance and courage in the face of overwhelming odds.

Each Eagle then contributed an “imagine this” scenario, playing the part of the hero in his or her special moment (like winning the Super Bowl or debuting on Broadway.)

Next we focused on SMART goals for the morning in Core Skills; listened to Ms. Samantha’s “trial and error” hero story; finished self portraits in Art and continued with the Game Lab 3D work on probabilities and decision trees.

Ms. Samantha’s Hero Story.

At the final huddle, all this was wrapped into a discussion about using probabilities and decision trees, the need to adjust (but not abandon) our dreams as life happens – for example, a severe knee injury might require you to become an NFL team owner instead of an NFL quarterback — and how our work with SMART goals in Core Skills not only imbed perseverance as a habit, but provides basic skills to fall back on when life throws us a curve.

All of this served as a reminder that our Eagles need to be weighing what type of Apprenticeship they want to test in the spring.

Above, the decision tree used at day;s end that links an Eagles gifts, joy and opportunities to his or her dreams for tomorrow, providing a visual map of how life can force us to adapt.

Finally, we are adding even more accountability and consequences to the mix, so be prepared to hear some squawks.

Above – a more obvious signalling device to help students understand which “discussion mode is in effect: “red” is full focus; “yellow” collaboration; “green” free time.

The first five weeks we focused on building the community – making it a gathering no one ever wants to miss. Then we added SMART and Excellence goals to encourage the habit of hard work. Soon the few students who are still struggling with committing completely to day to day work will find themselves increasingly removed — literally hell for middle schoolers – until they find the focus needed to excel.

Because at Acton Academy, we are very serious about the learning covenants that our Eagles and Guides signed.